


Mantra

by CorpseBrigadier



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Children, Gen, Potatoes, Worldbuilding, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/pseuds/CorpseBrigadier
Summary: Sabin and Gau visit Mobliz. Children are entertained, food is shared, and people contemplate the ramifications of a world without magic.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Mantra

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phlyarologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlyarologist/gifts).

> **Note on Text:** Terminology follows the Woolsey translation.

“So really it’s mostly just about remembering how to breathe,” Sabin said, kneeling down as the child looked at him incredulously. “Do you remember how to breathe?”

“I haven’t stopped yet.” The boy laughed at his own joke. He was definitely twelve, with all the ideas about comedy that entailed.

“No, I mean how to breathe with your whole body, just... “ He grabbed the boy by the hand and placed his thumb along the valley between his two outermost knuckles. “Remember how a little motion like this…” He gently pressed his wrist downward. “...leads to this…” The tension led to his elbow, and with a graceful motion Sabin flipped him softly onto the ground. “It’s like that.”

“So you’re saying I just have to breathe hard enough, and I can shoot a lightning bolt?” 

Terra, sitting on a ledge by the water, gave out a laugh she’d long been suppressing. Sabin remained unflappable.

“It’s an _ aura _ bolt.” He said in a firm but encouraging voice, extending a hand to help the kid up. “And yes, basically.”

The boy huffed and puffed dramatically as Terra walked over to where the two of them stood, turning his open hands towards her in a sweeping gesture while giving what he must have imagined to be a very intimidating battle cry. No beam of light appeared, however, to prevent her from turning him around and pointing towards the direction of the new repaired cottage atop the hill, where Duane was just stepping outside to call them in to supper.

“You can try to breathe magic back into the world after you’ve eaten,” she said.

The boy, evidently enthused at the prospect of food, sprinted away without further acknowledgement or good will. Sabin ran a hand through his hair.

“It’s not _ magic _ you know?” he said unconvincingly.

Terra was already walking away from him.

“Does it work?” she asked blithely.

Sabin exhaled sharply. “It _should_,” he said stubbornly. “It’s not like you need an esper to throw a punch or anything.”

Even before he caught up with her, he knew that she was smiling. She did not say anything to him, however, as they walked alongside one another up the straw-colored path. He suspected, of course, she had a lot of thoughts on the matter.

* * *

Since the fall of the tower, trade ships out of Jidoor found their way to Mobliz with increasing frequency. They’d rebuilt. They’d piled up supplies. They’d had canned fruit and spun sugar for birthdays. As the elements settled into new rhythms and seasons, the children had crowded with an almost religious solemnity to watch new shoots rising from the soaked grain Duane had prevented them from eating a week before. 

All this was to say that the village _did_ have more on hand to serve a prince than a large cauldron of boiled potatoes. They had—in fact—offered to prepare something more befitting of visitors despite Sabin’s insistence that he was a potatoes kinda guy, and Terra only relented in her offers to sacrifice one of the new imported chickens when Gau started excitedly asking questions about the heap of “soft rocks” that lay unpeeled on the table.

Gau, who was wont to stay by Sabin’s side when he wasn’t traipsing alongside Cyan’s, had been enthusiastically received by the children. Sabin’s offers to teach people a move or two had been quite overshadowed by him as he roared about in the grass impersonating every type of animal on record in the village’s lone, half-burnt illustrated volume on the subject. Sabin rather suspected that the boy who hadn’t quite thrown an aura bolt that afternoon would join his companions at the one-man-zoo long before before taking up any serious meditation practices.

It was therefore something of a surprise to Sabin when he sat down by the table, a voluminous plate of potatoes and some sort of relish in hand, that Gau should be sitting perfectly stock stone still in the corner. In the pandemonium of several dozen grubby, sun-baked orphans vying for butter as they compared and complained about their respective portions, it seemed the most ridiculous thing in the world that _ Gau _ should be the lone figure maintaining a dignified calm. Before he could comment however, Sabin traced the line of the boy’s vision to the other side of the room, where Katarin swayed with a steady cadence. She was holding her baby.

“Has he ever really seen one before?” Terra asked, sweeping quietly over next to him. 

Sabin didn’t say anything. The same thought had occurred to him, and it filled him with a great deal of bitterness that he knew Gau did not share.

“I hadn’t really either, you know…” she said softly, not batting an eye as she deftly moved a chipped ceramic mug out of the reach of a marauding toddler. “He’s lucky to meet him now rather than at two weeks out.”

The infant in question, who could have been two weeks or twenty for all Sabin really knew, gave out a fussy whimper. Gau, head cocked, imitated it in a pitch perfect return whine, which drew everyone’s eyes—baby’s included—to him. There was the barest instant of silence before he bound on four limbs to Sabin’s side and nervously grabbed a potato, which he ate in a manner such as most people might eat an apple.

“Small Repoman.” Gau bit off a large hunk, swallowing it snakelike and all at once. “Strange call.”

Terra giggled, watching as Sabin no doubt made the face of a man completely at a loss as to how to explain childhood in front of two people who had never had one.

“It’s a baby, Gau,” He gestured around the room. “They grow into one of these and then into some big goon like me. Like, uh… a puppy but with... people.”

Gau hopped onto the edge of the table, misappropriated another one of Sabin’s potatoes, and nodded vigorously. 

“Awooo!”

Children giggled and clapped as he mauled his latest helping as if it were some dissident in the jaws of a tusked imperial lobo. Katarin looked on, charmed but seemingly apprehensive that her son would soon join him in howling. Terra, evidently used to this degree of chaos, sipped her tea.

Sabin took the quick opportunity to work at what food was left to him while Gau did an impromptu study of all canines: extinct, endangered, or thriving. He almost managed to focus his attention entirely on what he was prepared to tell Terra were the most delicious rocks he had ever eaten. What tripped him up was when Gau—in the guise of one of the red fanged wolves that once roamed the western plains—tried to cast a spell.[1]

He wasn’t certain at first what was happening; there was nothing special—after all—about Gau gesticulating wildly and making inarticulate sounds. However, he felt a faint tremor, as though the center from whence his breath came had just cast off the smallest atom and sent it floating across the room.

“Gau!”

It stopped almost as soon as he spoke, leaving him wondering if the sensation had been entirely his imagining. Gau, seeing he was distracted, made off with a third potato.

* * *

Terra and he walked alongside one another that evening, caught in the cries of cicadas that the unanticipated autumn had not yet killed. In the twilight, Mobliz seemed a different settlement—the extent of its ruination half-hidden in the shadows. The moon hung large and swollen in the purpling sky.

“I’m telling you it was magic,” Sabin said stubbornly. “Or at least it sorta wanted to be.”

Terra looked at him, and then she looked to the ground. It was obvious she didn’t believe him.

“Maybe not a case of ‘M M M M M M MAGIC,’ but still...” he continued. “It was like he’d tried to do one of those tricks of his, but it hadn’t gone off.”

“Sabin, if it didn’t go off, how was it magic?”

“It _ felt _like magic.” He paused, trying to come up with better words to describe it. “Like magic… but not there yet.”

Terra turned away from him, looking to the endless rippling of the sea that surrounded them.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s all going to come roaring back, just... I mean, like I said before, all that stuff I did before _ should _ work.”

“So it _doesn’t_ work?” she asked quietly. “You can’t still ‘breathe’ some mysterious white light into an opponent’s face?”

Sabin didn’t know how to respond. When he practiced, when he cleared his mind and gone through all the basic movements and stances, everything felt natural. Everything felt like it was about to follow through. The fact that it didn’t, he told himself, had been because he had decided not to finish each time. He’d told himself that maybe he didn’t need to do something that theatrical in a world at peace.

“I don’t know if I _ can’t _,” he said sheepishly. “It’s just…”

“Relm’s paintings are only alive on the canvas these days...” Terra said pensively. “The moogles are just dancing for fun. Strago…” She smiled. “He’s just an old man in a squirrel suit.”

“Man, I hate that thing.”[2]

“I suppose that what I’m saying is that maybe you’re having some trouble accepting how things have changed. I should know… I had to adapt a lot.”

“But maybe that’s it!” Sabin said hopefully. “Maybe you’re just a little too close to the fire; magic was such a big thing for you, but for me…” He paused a moment, worried he was on the precipice of saying something unintentionally hurtful. “I guess I never even really thought anything I did was magic.”

“It’s strange when I think of it...” Her voice was definitely growing a bit melancholy. “They brought so much into the world that people didn’t notice it until they left.”

“Terra…”

She fidgeted with the edge of one of the scarves tied about her waist. Stepping onto the roof of a house still half sunk into the water, she began to make her way across the little inlet that nearly divided the town

“I miss her, you know,” she said, pausing to look at the sky. 

He followed her onto the roof and put a hand reassuringly on her shoulder, getting the sense that it wasn’t the best time to go in for a hug but feeling like she deserved one.

“She was you, though!” He wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this. “...and you’re still here and you shouldn’t have to miss yourself. I mean, I have utterly no expertise here, but you’re you, and I’m me, and if there was a little magic to me throwing around a train or Gau pretending he was one of those floating frogs… well… maybe all the magic in the world wasn’t an esper thing.”

She sat down. He did not. He figured if he was going to keep pontificating on things he knew nothing about, he might as well do it standing up. 

“People... “ he began, trying to sound confident. “People are magic.”

She snorted.

“Look, it’s hokey, but espers and people: they aren’t so different. You’re proof of that. Maybe we all had a little magic to begin with?”

She turned to look up at him, obviously not sold but nevertheless looking kindly upon his efforts. Before she could speak, there was a sudden sound in the distance of somebody expressing displeasure at the insult and injustice of either a bath or a bedtime.

“Katarin probably has her hands full,” she said, standing up. As she started to walk back towards the lights of the cottage, however, she tripped and slid down the rough and rusted shingles of the house.

“Terra!”

Sabin did a gentle roll down and met her back on the grass, not quiet making it to catch her before she landed. As they both pulled himself up, he realized that she’d cut her arm bracing herself against the tumble. 

“Aw jeez!” he said, giving the wound a look over. He didn’t really think terribly hard as he wished that he could undo the injury, pressing his hand tight against the cut in the hopes that it would staunch. He didn’t notice the way his mind drifted, automatically tracing the shapes and syllables of words he’d repeated back in the mountains until they'd seemed as natural as his own thoughts. Therefore, it struck him as wholly surprising and a little strange when he looked to her and saw her grinning in stunned astonishment.

She laughed as she hugged him, evidently unhurt. He realized that the faint and dying blue light between them was no illusion of the new set sun and that there were no glow worms or foxfire left in the world to cast it.

**Author's Note:**

> [1] For those interested in rehashing game mechanics, Red Fangs (Bloodfangs) allow Gau to use _Drain_ as a Rage ability.  
[2] An allusion to [Sabin's apparently canonical dislike and fear of squirrels](http://shmuplations.com/ff6/).
> 
> * * *
> 
> See my [profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorpseBrigadier/profile) for notes on remixes, podfic, derivative works, and constructive criticism.


End file.
